Paper short abstract:

This person-centered ethnography critically interrogates the reproductive healthcare encounter as a site at which hegemonic discourses intersect to reshape gendered bodies and subjectivities and reconfigure Syrian refugees as proper sexual citizens of the nation-state.

Paper long abstract:

Since the colonial period, the norms distinguishing socially desirable from deviant reproduction have been shaped by the hierarchical ideologies of racial inferiority that justified EuroAmerican imperialism Racialized, gendered subjects are produced through morally-laden discourses surrounding the responsible reproductive subject. Migrant bodies, in particular, are subject to especially stringent forms of “reproductive governance,” through which they may tenuously acquire the status of responsible sexual citizens or, conversely, be constructed as “anti-citizens,” whose deviant sexual and/or reproductive practices threaten the wellbeing of the nation-state. Drawing upon 24 months of fieldwork with Syrian refugees, this paper critically interrogates the reproductive healthcare encounter as a site at which hegemonic discourses intersect to reshape gendered bodies and subjectivities and reconfigure refugees as proper sexual citizens of the nation-state. I unite the experience-near perspective of comparative ethnography with rigorous feminist analyses16 of biopower and the nation-state to contrast the varied practices and forms of reproductive governance present at two very different sites—Amman, Jordan and San Diego, California. By foregrounding bodily experience as described by my interlocutors during person-centered interviews, the article considers how reproductive subjectivities and desires are reshaped under such conditions.